Memoriam
by isingthereforeiam
Summary: In his prison cell, Tarant Hightop remembers. Irascibeth, pre-Red Queen/Tarant Hightop. Oneshot. A lovely fanart was drawn by a reader: Check it out! Thanks Thalia-Sandy! :D


Tarant Hightop remembered the Red Queen when she was still a young woman, less social than most young girls her age due to her crippling migraines, but sweet and even-tempered anyway. He remembered when she was merely Elizabeth, the eldest sister of the royal family of Underland.

By reason of her migraines, that were ruining her eyesight and preventing her from being able to perform state duties as she was terribly sensitive to light, Princess Elizabeth had been stricken from the succession, and her younger sister Mirana (she'd been named after a saint of the unionist church of Underland, and Tarant rather thought it had given her a bit of a complex) been made heiress presumptive.

Tarant Hightop remembered the look of shock that had spread across the Princess Elizabeth's face when the Privy Council, headed by her father, King Henricus, had declared her merely Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the king. She would henceforth be the third lady in the land, behind her mother the queen and her younger sister the next-in-line. He had been standing to the side of the canopy of state in his official capacity as a gentleman of the chamber, and could feel the girl's heart break. He had had to blink back tears of his own as the princess had dissolved into hysterical sobs, her red hair tumbling around her shoulders.

Tarant Hightop remembered.

Sleeping in the prison cell was torture on his body. Years of working with lead had left his skin taut and painful, his joints swelling. Something about the metal left men weak and drained, their bodies slowly shutting down piece by piece, all accompanied by a deathly pallor. In the tradition of the Hightop Mountains, he had painted merry colors around his eyes to signify his wealth and well-being. On the peaks of the Hightops, all the richest families had their proprietary color schemes, and one family could not copy another's without causing some offense. There had been, for a time, a wave of inter-familial aggression due to feuding families posing as members of their enemies' clans by painting their faces with the rival family's colors and infiltrating their houses to do harm.

These colors were dulled now, and the Hatter wondered vaguely if he should not have had them tattooed. There were servants who performed the painful markings for a fee, using sharp needles and dyes. His uncle had done it and come home with frightfully swollen eyes. The sight alone was enough to make Tarant Hightop look at his hatting needles with new perspective (for they could harm as well as create), and however handsome his uncle looked afterwards, discouraged the young hatter from deviating from the traditional stains and unguents.

"You are still yourself, kingdom or not," he remembered saying to the devastated young woman, whom he had cornered in the gardens after the privy council meeting. "Please, Elizabeth," he had begged. "You must think of your health."

He remembered that her eyes had been dark and swimming with tears. "They've ruined my life, Tarant," she'd said brokenly.

From that day forward Elizabeth had been furiously, ragingly angry at her family. Mirana, with whom she had never gotten along, became a target of such virulent hatred that the pale girl stayed much away from her fiery sister.

Tarant Hightop remembered Elizabeth of Krimms in the dim light of a torch, walking softly across the garden to meet him at midnight on the New Year. She was wearing a dark gown and a mask, to hide her face from any revelers who might recognize her. Tarant was instantly recognizable in any case, what with his violently red hair and the bright clan markings around his pale green-yellow eyes.

"Happy new year, Elizabeth," he'd said softly, pulling her mask off her and stroking her face. She was so pale, having spent the past few months indoors in her grief and pain, both physical and mental. Her eyes were huge in the flickering torch light. She'd shivered, but stilled when he pressed his lips to hers. "Rejoice," he'd murmured into her hair. "You live yet."

His only answer had been her fingers curling into his shirt.

Among the people of the Hightops, lovemaking between the unmarried was not discouraged, and so Tarant Hightop remembered Elizabeth of Krimms against a tree, her skirts lifted and her arms wrapped around his neck and her breath hot on his skin. She had been his first, and he hers, and they had begun their romance at a young age. By the time Elizabeth had been disinherited, it had already been going on for two years. At the age of twenty, the unmarried princess Elizabeth had been deflowered by the eldest son of the Hightop clan on a rainy afternoon in her drawing room. According to the law, this made her unsuitable for marriage, though her headaches were quickly rendering that impossible as well. According to the Hightop peoples, she was simply a young woman enjoying the pleasures of youth, and that, she felt with some justification, she deserved.

Mirana, of course, was as pure as the driven snow, but Elizabeth knew, in the throes of pleasure, that she much preferred carnal knowledge. The little saint would be a virgin until she made a marriage sanctioned by the state, and then submit dutifully on her wedding night like the perfect fool she was.

Tarant Hightop remembered that Elizabeth had begun to change gradually, as the years went by. She had always had an appetite for their couplings, and was an enthusiastic participant, but she began suddenly to come to him more often, demanding that he stop his work to make love to her, and when he would not she shouted at him. Their sexual interactions became less loving and more rough, the passion turning to near-violence on Elizabeth's part.

Her manners deteriorated completely, her temper shortened. She was quick to say the most vile things, refusing to go to church and refusing utterly to attend lessons or do anything useful with herself. She spent her time plotting and planning, and used her sway over the red-headed hatter to force him to tell her the things that went on in her father's chambers. In this way she kept abreast of the politics of the land, scheming, until one day she undid all her hard work with the stroke of a pen.

It was some sort of letter or draft that she had left on her escritoire, that had been taken by a lady-in-waiting, to the king, who had read it over with some alarm. His eldest daughter was threatening suicide if she was not restored to the succession. The letter was incomplete and incoherent, and clearly not meant to be seen. The king ordered knights to arrest his daughter and confine her to her apartments. It was done, the princess kicking and screaming murder at the guards and at her father and mother, who could hear her from the throne room. Her mother had closed tearful eyes, and her father had reset his jaw and gestured for the Wits' End ambassador to continue. Tarant Hightop shut his eyes for a moment, aware that he was off to the side of the throne in the presence of many men. He willed away his surge of sympathy for the girl and returned his attention to the king.

They did not meet again.

It was years later now, and the cause of her migraines had been discovered. It was an incurable growth in her brain, one doctors were at a loss to treat, and they divined that it was pressing against the part of her brain that controlled good sense and kindness and propriety, and that Elizabeth was most unstable. Upon crowning herself, in a swift political move backed by some duplicitous Parliament members, she had gone so far as to change her name to Irascibeth, a name with consequence, she believed. The constant reminder of her wrath, woven into her very name, the very marker of her existence, should intimidate her subjects into total submission. Failing that, she had been overjoyed when a group of noblemen against the accession of her perfect younger sister had brought her the jabberwocky. It was an extremely rare find, a creature rumored to be mythological, perhaps the only one of its kind, who gave its loyalty to the power-hungry. She had shown no fear when the creature roared terrifyingly; rather she had approached it, demanded his submission and told him his purpose. Defend her right to the throne, or die. The jabberwocky, with his all-seeing eye, knew that the Vorpal sword was in the possession of the royal family (it was the only thing he was vulnerable to), and that the lady had begun a coup that would be unstoppable. He bowed to her, his voice like metal grating against metal. "I serve Your Majesty."

And so he and his kind had become her enemies, this twisted version of the Elizabeth he once knew. Her head had swollen to an awful size and she had taken to wearing ghastly white makeup to hide the scars she'd inflicted on herself in her years in exile. Her hair, once auburn and flowing (it had been her particular pride), was hidden under a cap and she wore an imposing rose-red wig. She plucked her eyebrows away and drew thin arches above a slap of blue eye-paint. She looked completely unlike herself. She was no longer herself.

Oh, yes, Tarant Hightop remembered.


End file.
